Dallas attorney Jamey Newberg has been covering the Texas Rangers, from the big club down through the entire farm system, since 1998. His website can be found at www.newbergreport.com.

Go time.

If you were right there with those two folks who thought I might have mailed it in after Tuesday night’s Josh Hamilton Show with my one-photo/one-word send, I’m leaving no doubt today. A crazy week at work stays crazy for another day, and so this morning’s offering is a 58-foot curve, a pratfall rounding third, a big bag of slack off.

The season hits the one-fifth mark shortly after Yu Darvish and C.J. Wilson get in their first work tonight – or tomorrow, as the weather dictates – and it’s a date that we’ve all had circled for five months, before we even knew whether Texas had bid enough to try and make Darvish a Ranger.

Six straight series wins to open the season were followed by three straight series losses, but Texas then went into Baltimore and took three of four and the league’s best record from the Orioles, ending with a day on which the Rangers played two games to neutral results while the idle Angels were the ones to suffer a setback (losing starting catcher Chris Iannetta for up to two months due to a fractured wrist), and here we are.

Here we are.

The first of three is the first of 19. And it’s only one of 162, of course, Game 33 to be exact. It counts just as much as Game 3 or Game 50 or Game 153.

Still, it’s Darvish and it’s Wilson, and there’s no other way it could have been teed up and been any more captivating. Rivalry baseball, in real time and real space. Appointment baseball.

But yeah, one of 162 and all that. Three of 162. Overanalysis in advance of Darvish-Wilson, of Harrison-Williams, and of Feliz-Weaver makes as much sense as breaking down a great film before seeing it.

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